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From our fabulous News Hawks!

Have you seen a TG-related news story online or in your local paper? Send it in to TGF and become a News Hawk! Don't assume we know everything that's out there, because you are our eyes and ears. To file a story, send it in to Cindy.



Banker Shows Up In Drag For Court Hearing

Contributed by Sabrina, Stephanie Gray and Andee W
via the London Times
Monday, November 11, 1998

A LEADING City investment manager dressed for the occasion when he appeared before a London court on fraud charges yesterday.

Peter Young arrived wearing lipstick and makeup, a calf-length skirt and low heels - and asked to be known as Elizabeth.

Mr Young, 40, was formerly a sober-suited fund manager at Morgan Grenfell Asset Management. His thick-brown hair now reaches his shoulders though he still wears the small round glasses that gave him such a studious appearance in his heyday.

He and three other men are charged with a conspiracy to defraud the trustees or investors of three Deutsche Morgan Grenfell investment funds, which at one point held £1.3 billion on behalf of 180,000 investors. The funds managed by Mr Young were for a while the top performing European equity funds, encouraging many investors to turn to Morgan Grenfell.

But problems at the company two years ago caused Deutsche Bank, the firm's German parent, to inject £180 million into the funds. Subsequent compensation payments to investors have cost the bank a further £200 million.

Shortly after Mr Young was suspended in August 1996, his wife, Harmanna, told of a shopping trip on which he bought 30 jars of gherkins.

Mr Young is charged with Erik Langaker, Jan Helge Johnsen and Steward Armer.Mr Armer, who is studying in Chile, was not in court for

the preliminary hearing yesterday, when City of London magistrates remanded all four on bail until March 15.



Who's That Girl?

Contributed by Penelope
via Time Out New York
November 12,1998

Meet Gaku, the "Pat" of the modeling world. Host of one of Japan's top-rated talk shows and a budding supermodel, this bi-gender beauty has graced Japanese runways, graced the pages of English magazines Face and ID and appeared in ad campaigns for Gucci, Armani, Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons. Now Gaku is Storming New York. The fine-boned, pale one is scheduled to walk six runway show during Fashion Week (Nov. 2 through 6).

Wondering whose team this model plays on? Even though he gets a ton of work hawking women's clothing and has cheekbones and arched brows that most women would kill for, Gaku is a man. Through a translator, Gaku (dressed in tight Jordache jeans, a Helmut Lang sweater, high heels and no makeup) professed: "I'm open-minded. I think both girls and boys are beautiful."



Hunter Trial Finally Starts

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker, Rachelle Austin and Bobby G
via Associated Press
November 12,1998

Jury selection began Monday in a lawsuit based on allegations of bigotry, negligence and dereliction of duty in the death of a transvestite at a municipal hospital in the nation's capital.

``It's long overdue,'' said Margie Hunter, who in February 1996 filed a $10 million lawsuit alleging that emergency medical technicians failed to do their jobs and a doctor at D.C. General Hospital contributed to the death of her transvestite son.

Tyrone ``Tyra'' Hunter, 24, a hairstylist who dressed in women's clothes, was a passenger in a car being driven by an acquaintance when the vehicle was struck by another car in Washington on Aug. 7, 1995.

Margie Hunter contends that emergency medical technicians laughed at her son and refused to treat him. Her lawsuit also claims Dr. Joseph Bastien, the physician at D.C. General who oversaw her son's care, was not properly certified.

The suit contends that Bastien failed to get Hunter into surgery to stop internal bleeding, and he died without receiving a blood transfusion.

Among the witnesses expected to testify are several residents who pulled Tyrone Hunter from the car and allegedly overheard comments made by one of the emergency medical technicians when it was discovered that Hunter was a male. Those paramedics allegedly stopped treating Hunter for at least five minutes after the discovery.



Rally Over Attempted Hate Murder

Contributed by Rachelle Austin
via News Planet
November 10,1998

Activists responded quickly to the attempted hate murder of a cross-dresser and determined to "take back the street".

Three hundred people turned out for a rally in Baltimore, Maryland November 6 at the site of the hate shooting of cross-dresser Lynn (Leonard) Vines. Vines somehow survived being shot six times -- twice in the arm, twice in the chest, once in the back, and once in the shoulder -- on October 28 by one of a group of perhaps 20 young men and women who were commenting about not allowing any "drag queen faggot bitches" on their street. It was the neighborhood Vines had grown up in, and he was visiting his cousin at the time to pick up the key to an apartment he was thinking of renting, but as he tried to explain this and repeated that he didn't want any trouble, one young man struck him in the face. When Vines tried to run away, someone carrying a cane used it to trip him. "I heard someone say, 'Mike, shoot the bitch,' and the next thing I knew, I was shot in the chest, and I went into shock," Vines said. After the shooting, the young people left the scene while Vines was bleeding on his cousin's stairs, but luckily a paramedic in a nearby fire station heard the shots, took off in an ambulance and Vines' cousin flagged down. Vines spent a week in the hospital and faces a lengthy period of recovery before he can return to his work as a housecleaner and drag entertainer. Police are looking for the suspect, Paul Bishop, to charge him with attempted first-degree murder under a warrant issued November 5.



Shanghai Shocked by Drag Act

Contributed by Rachelle Austin and Jodie Miller
via Reuters
November 11,1998

Shanghai police detained two male singers for performing in women's clothes and shut down a night club on its opening night. Shocked patrons called police to the city's Guoling Dance Hall after discovering two singers wearing make-up and dresses were men, the Xinmin Evening News said Thursday.

The two performers swayed on stage, stroked their hair coquettishly and batted their eyelids at the audience before breaking into song, the newspaper said. "Unexpectedly, as soon as they opened their red lips, the rough male sound came through the microphone," it said. The dance hall was immediately plunged into chaos and some patrons called the police.



 Musto and Springer Get Lucky

Contributed by Jodie Miller
via New York Post
November 11,1998

Page Six of the New York Post reports: "It's bound to be a night of mayhem on Wednesday when Jerry Springer presides as ringmaster at the Lucky Cheng's birthday bash for Village Voice columnist Michael Musto. Previous guest hosts have included Brooke Shields, John Wayne Bobbitt, and Divine Brown. This year's invite says, 'Jerry, please help me! I'm a young lady trapped inside supposedly male gossip columnist Michael Musto's body!' The party will undoubtedly make Springer's chaotic TV freakfest look tame in comparison. And the eatery's gender-bending troupe of transvestite waitresses plans to parody Jerry's show with a skit in which they rip each others' wigs off."



TSs Challenge Denial of UK Public Funds for SRS

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
via PA News
November 10,1998

Three transsexuals today challenged the legality of a health authority's refusal to fund sex change operations. In the first case of its kind, they are seeking to overturn North West Lancashire Health Authority's decision that it was entitled to take into account its own resources and refuse to pay for surgery. The three, described as females trapped in male bodies at birth, have already started "gender reassignment" treatment and are now in an "acutely distressed mental and physical state", a High Court judge hearing the test case in London was told.

They had started hormone treatment, mostly with NHS help, which had led to "irreversible" changes to their bodies, including the growth of female breasts. Their QC, Nicholas Blake, said four similar cases had already been settled. The three were the first to come before the court on a full application for judicial review. He accused the health authority, which covers Blackpool and Preston, of operating an unlawful blanket ban since 1995 on funding sex change operations. The authority had said it would fund where there was an "overriding clinical need", but that phrase was "meaningless", said the QC. To refuse funding to patients who had already started sex change treatment on resource grounds was a false economy because of the cost to the NHS of continuing to treat the psychological and physical distress they had to go on enduring. "Miss A", aged 21, "Miss D" and "Miss G", both aged 50, are already living their lives as women, Mr Justice Hidden was told. "Miss A" had actually undergone three operations before the health authority adopted its policy and all treatment ended. The three, who are legally aided and cannot be named for legal reasons, are seeking final treatment and surgery which will allow them to live more fully in their female identity, which they believe has always been their true identity. None can afford the treatment privately, which they say can be as high as 110 an hour. They were refused gender re-assignment surgery in 1996 and 1997 after it was decided none of them had shown a demonstrable overriding need for treatment. Mr Blake argued that the health authority was under a duty to take into account the nature of an illness when deciding whether or not to provide funding. All sides were agreed that gender identity disorder was an illness.

In these cases the authority had fettered its own discretion and taken into account an erroneous and flawed view - that transsexuals could be counselled into being reconciled with their biological condition. But this was a "useless" form of treatment "which merely adds to their distress". Mr Blake argued the correct treatment, once a case was found to be genuine, was counselling to assess and enable a person "to live in their gender reassigned role", with hormone treatment and probably surgery if a patient was deemed suitable.

It was not a case of "operations on demand". For every 100 males who started out on the process, only 15 were assessed as suitable for surgery, according to the Charing Cross clinic in London for gender identity disorder. The health authority's claim that exceptions to its policy would be made in cases of a demonstrable clinical need was "meaningless", said Mr Blake. He added: "It is only in cases of proven and demonstrable clinical need that drastic treatment is offered or recommended as suitable in the first place." All three applicants had undergone hormone treatment which had led to irreversible changes to their bodies, including the growth of female breasts that could now only be removed through surgery. Mr Blake said the health authority was under a misapprehension about the nature of "gender identity disorder", more commonly known as transsexualism. Health chiefs had mistakenly concluded that sex change treatment, including surgery, had no proven health benefits when undisputed evidence showed it was highly successful. Medical experts in the US, Canada, the UK and elsewhere in Europe reported percentage success rates "in the higher 80s and 90s", and it could not therefore be described as ineffective. Whilst agreeing that gender identity disorder is an illness, Mr Gerard Clarke, for the health authority, will argue in a hearing expected to last two to three days, that refusal to fund was neither irrational nor perverse. He will contend the authority acted within its powers and the court should be slow to intervene in cases when clinical judgments were made about allocating scarce healthcare resources. Although the health authority said operations would be allowed if overriding clinical need could be shown, in practice it was operating an unlawful blanket policy. The policy was also contrary to the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act and the EU equal treatment directive.

One of the authority's definitions of "overriding clinical need" which could lead to funding was that a patient was suicidal, said Mr Blake. But, according to expert opinion, a person suffering from psychotic illness, in addition to being transsexual, was unlikely to be a suitable candidate for surgery. Mr Blake said the vast majority of health authorities in England and Wales were now prepared to fund this treatment and "treatment by postcode" had been recognised as undesirable. Other European countries, including France and Germany, also provided funding. The health authority had wrongly compared sex change treatment to treatment designed to improve self-image, beauty or lifestyle, such as breast enlargement, weight loss or tattoo removal, or operations to improve the size or shape of a person's nose. "These simply cannot compare with the psychiatric illness and disorder caused by gender identity disorder. This is just not cosmetic surgery to make yourself look more attractive," he said. There had been a "strong response" from medical experts, who found those arguments "deeply offensive to their lifelong work and expertise in this difficult area". He added: "This is a disease, an illness, a serious disorder recognised internationally and with an appropriate form of treatment."



Female Flies Turn Macho

Contributed by Rose Prescott
via New Scientist
November 10,1998

Gender-bending experiments on fruit flies suggest that sexual orientation is irreversibly "hard wired" into the brain at the point when maggots turn into flies. Researchers say the findings could help to tease out new insights into the genetic and biochemical roots of sexual behavior.

The team leader, Rolf Noethiger from the University of Zurich, stresses that sexuality in people is very unlikely to be as fixed as in fruit flies. "The same thing might happen in humans, but not with the same rigidity," he says. "Human sexual behavior is clearly much more complex."

Noethiger was working with postgraduate student Ben Arthur and others on fruit flies with a mutation in a gene called _transformer_. Normally the gene confers the equivalent of femininity on the fruit fly. The mutation cancels out development of female sexual behavior. Through further genetic tinkering, the researchers enabled the mutant flies to develop their usual female anatomy. "These pseudo-female flies behave as if they had male brains, even though they look and smell like females and have female genitalia," says Noethiger.

This creates bizarre situations where "macho" females try in vain to mate with other females, while being pursued by normal males. Males with the same mutation as these females behave as normal, because the gene is switched off in males anyway.

Noethiger and his colleagues have now shown that _transformer_ will only affect the fly at one critical stage of its development. If the gene is not activated until later, male behavior remains imprinted in the brain.

The researchers equipped mutant flies with a working copy of the _transformer_ gene, which they tethered to a genetic switch. This allowed them to activate the gene at will by suddenly raising the temperature.

The team found that _transformer_ only restored femininity to mutant females if activated within a critical 30-hour period during development, just at the point where the larval maggot metamorphoses into a fly. If _transformer_ was switched on earlier or later, the mutant flies remained macho.

But with correct timing, female mutants were "refeminised" and male mutants adopted female sexual behavior. In other words, genetic programming of sexual behavior comes in parallel with anatomical development of sexual organs during metamorphosis (_Current Biology_, vol 8, p 1187).

Noethiger plans to look for anatomical and biochemical differences in the brains of flies that can be traced to the activity of _transformer_. He stresses that this mechanism may not be common to many animals. Hs team has not yet found an equivalent gene in house flies. And although a gene called _transformer-2_ which is required for the _transformer_ gene to work also exists in humans, its function is unconnected with sexual development.

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